


Fata Morgana

by ChocolatePecan



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn the trickster, Blood, Gap Filler, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied Character Death, Noct isn't really dead he's probably just sad and on a train somewhere between here and Gralea, Poor Prompto, Prompto is a competent gunman but a terrible negotiator, grievous wounding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolatePecan/pseuds/ChocolatePecan
Summary: “You said somebody had to pay for all this mess, right?” Prompto says. “Then take me instead. It’s my fault.”“Isn’t everything?” Ardyn’s smile knows too much about him, too much about everything that’s happened.“Prompto.” Noct stills in Ardyn’s grip. “After everything I said to you on the train?”Prompto wishes he could take away Noct’s look of worry, the one he’d thought he wanted to see. “If you haven’t figured out I love you yet, bro, you’re screwed.”





	Fata Morgana

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaciart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaciart/gifts).



> Who said [here](http://kaciart.tumblr.com/post/170461377213) that she'd like to see Ardyn messing with Prompto by showing him a captured illusory Noctis, having Prompto offer to trade places, and Ardyn agreeing but then cutting 'Noct's' throat anyway. 
> 
> So, here it is. I hope it's all right, lovely :)
> 
> For those with concerns, there is not a real character death. However, Prompto's reaction to what he believes is Noct's death is very real, until the illusion is revealed. Proceed with caution.
> 
> As always, thanks go to the amazing kay_cricketed for her endless love and support, and for coming up with such a snazzy title :3

The snowmobile is a comforting thrum beneath Prompto as he races across the tundra. He’s grateful to Aranea – for knocking sense into him, for being his wing-girl, for setting him on the path to Gralea. The sunset turns everything golden-pink, and it’s beautiful. If only he had time to get his camera out, but he hasn’t felt this driven since receiving Lunafreya’s letter and deciding that he would become Noct’s friend. He won’t let his heart sink at the memory of Noct’s words on the train, his arm jammed against his throat: _What’re you after, following me around this whole time? It’s all your fault!_

He shakes his head to dismiss the memory. There have been too many good times for it to end this way. He and Noct will work through it somehow. The harder the battle, the better the prize.

Prompto doesn’t recognise the two dark spots against the snow on his distant left at first. It’s not until he’s a little closer that Ardyn’s hat tips him off, then the burnout on his jacket and the stupid frilly sleeves. Prompto’s mind seems to short-circuit when he recognises the other figure by the night-black hair and wide, dark eyes. Ardyn’s arm is tight around Noct’s throat, and the dagger pressed under his ribs shines in the fading light.

Almost falling from the snowmobile in his haste, Prompto’s revolver is in his hands before his feet are steady in the snow. He trains it on Ardyn’s smiling face. Ardyn tightens his grip on Noct’s throat in response. Something bony-sounding clicks.

“Noct! You okay, buddy?”

“Just…peachy,” Noct forces, both hands at his throat, trying to loosen Ardyn’s grip.

“Let him go!” Ardyn and Prompto call at the same time. Ardyn’s grin becomes even more sickly. “Oh, you’re so predictable. How have you put up with him all these years, Noct?”

Noct’s response is to punch and claw at Ardyn’s arm.

Prompto lines up his sights on Ardyn’s temple. It’s not a risky shot: Noct’s far from Ardyn’s head, and he can take out the brain from here.

“You’ve been a very naughty boy.” Ardyn tuts and shakes his head. “All this trouble just because you and your father had a falling out. Look at the mess you’ve made. All your dear brothers, left for dead in their tubes. What would Daddy say?”

“Shut up.” Prompto’s too good a gunman to tighten his hand under stress. “Let Noct go.”

“Shoot him!” Noct is reaching for Ardyn’s eyes, which means Prompto can’t take the shot without risking Noct’s fingers. “He killed Gladio and Ignis!”

Prompto’s too good a human not to feel that right in the gut. “He what?”

“Somebody had to pay the price for your troublemaking,” Ardyn says, tilting his head dismissively. “I did tell you there was no shedding blood here.”

Prompto remembers sparring with Gladio, a big man with a sense of duty as broad as his shoulders. He was never sure where he stood with him outside of battle, but his big heart was there on his sleeve whenever he came to rescue him.

He remembers helping Ignis to cook, chopping vegetables and cutting smiley faces into carrot rounds, so that if Noct found them at least something would make him laugh about having to eat his veggies.

Prompto bites down. He can’t let Ardyn see the tears that weaken him and blur his vision. “Let Noct go.”

“He is adorable, Noct. I understand why you keep him around. Oh, that’s right – you don’t anymore.” With a quick movement, Ardyn pulls up Noct’s t-shirt and places the dagger back against his ribs. This time he presses hard enough to draw blood. Prompto feels his hackles rise. “Let’s see how he feels about you, shall we?"

“Let him go!” Prompto snarls.

“Just shoot him!” Noct sounds like he’s being slowly strangled.

As though he can sense the spot Prompto is aiming at, Ardyn puts his head on Noct’s shoulder and presses their temples together. “Are you a gambling man, Prompto?”

Not with his best friend’s life he isn’t. Prompto tries to find another target that would be as good as the temple, but Ardyn has all but wrapped himself around Noct. Shooting him now will mean Noct taking collateral damage.

“You said somebody had to pay for all this mess, right?” Prompto says. “Then take me instead. It’s my fault.”

“Isn’t everything?” Ardyn’s smile knows too much about him, too much about everything that’s happened.

“Prompto.” Noct stills in Ardyn’s grip. “After everything I said to you on the train?”

Prompto wishes he could take away Noct’s look of worry, the one he’d thought he wanted to see. “If you haven’t figured out I love you yet, bro, you’re screwed.”

“How very touching,” Ardyn says. “It all but brings a tear to my eye.”

Prompto won’t be taunted. “I’ll take whatever punishment you want. Just let him go.”

“No, Prompto, don’t—!”

“Shut up, Noct!” He can’t give Noct’s concern the attention it deserves with a revolver in his hands. “Trying to save your ass here!”

“The troublemaker for the errant prince? No more destroying Magitek labs?” Ardyn appears to mull this over. “All right. But what’s to stop you killing me the moment I let him go?”

Prompto watches the tip of the dagger dig further into the skin beneath Noct’s ribs. The look of pain on Noct’s face fires Prompto’s mirror neurons: he feels it like Thundaga. The trickle of blood that follows makes his mouth twitch up in a snarl.

There’s only one thing he can do to gain Ardyn’s trust. Ignis used to criticise his artlessness. _You can’t assume your opponent is functioning under the same moral code as you, Prompto. In fact, he almost certainly isn’t._

But it’s all he has. All he can do is throw himself on Ardyn’s mercy.

“If I put down my weapon, will you let him go?”

“But of course. And, in a return act of goodwill…” Ardyn returns his dagger to the ether with a shrug.

The balance shifts to Prompto’s favour, like the snowmobile changed his odds on the tundra. He’s confident he can resummon his revolver and fire it faster than Ardyn can reclaim the dagger. He doesn’t smile at the thought. It’s too early for that.

Holding his arm straight out, Prompto surrenders the revolver to the Armiger.

Ardyn rolls his eyes closed. The smile is slow to creep over his face.

“ _So_ green,” he says, and tuts.

Adrenaline crashes through Prompto as he realises his play has gone wrong. His arm can be in gun position in less than a second, his revolver in his hand and ready to fire. But Ardyn isn’t as slow as Prompto calculated. His source of pride – his ability to shoot through the same exact target twice in a row – isn’t going to be enough to save Noct, only enough to pave the way to his fall.

Feeling as though his body has come to a stop, Prompto watches Ardyn summon the dagger again with a flourish. The movements afterwards are as though he’s watching a movie, twenty-four still frames a second:

The dagger moves up, and notches itself just beneath Noct’s ear.

Noct’s eyes meet his, and narrow just a fraction.

Prompto feels his breath hitch and get stuck, like it’s the last one he’ll ever take.

The dagger moves fast, drawing a line on Noct’s throat like red permanent pen.

Noct frowns and purses his lips. His eyes roll skywards.

The gun is finally solid in Prompto’s hands.

And then, the red line spills blood.

It splatters over Ardyn’s arm, over Noct’s grubby white t-shirt, over the snow, over their feet, over Prompto’s hands, like some kind of horror movie.

This _is_ some kind of horror movie.

This is the worst kind of horror movie, the kind where the hero dies in the end and it’s all his best buddy’s fault.

Whatever noise Prompto makes deafens him. He misses with the first shot, so much do his hands tremble. Ardyn draws a bloody smile on Noct with his index finger and thumb, but as he opens his mouth to speak Prompto gets off a second shot right to his murdering bastard face.

He doesn’t stop there, either. As Ardyn falls Prompto closes in on him, firing shot after shot after shot into the black bundle of his corpse.

_Tchik._

_Tchik._

He throws the gun at Ardyn’s destroyed face for good measure. There’s no point in having a weapon now. There’s no point in anything.

Prompto’s ears are ringing, but the snow still sounds too loud as it crunches beneath his feet. He hasn’t eaten since this morning – a can of beans shared with Aranea before she sent him on his way. Nonetheless, he’s nauseous as he kneels beside Noct, putting his shaking hands on his thighs.

Noct’s crumpled in on himself, and the only crown he’s ever going to be wearing is the crown of blood slowly spreading across the packed ice. Prompto’s afraid to look at his face as he turns him over at the shoulder, afraid to see that last look of disapproval again.

Prompto’s throat tightens. Tears drip off his chin, too rapid for any to freeze on his face. His hands hover over Noct’s cheeks, as though they contain an enchantment that will bring life back to those greying eyes. His own hands still bloody, he picks strands of hair out of the blood on Noct’s temples. Strokes his forehead with the back of his hand. Sobs.

He can’t speak. If he could, Prompto would say, _I’m so stupid. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Take me with you because there’s nothing left for me here. I will never smile again._

The blood makes his grip slide as he covers the gape of Noct’s throat. He can’t look at that anymore. It’ll never leave him as it is. His head is heavy as Prompto cradles it to his shoulder, careful as though holding a baby. Any control he had over his sobbing is lost as he realises Noct still smells like two days of travelling without a bath and late, late nights.

 “Oh dear.” Ardyn’s voice shouldn’t be here. Prompto has done away with Ardyn, robbed him of his life in the way he robbed Prompto of _everything_.

Prompto turns, tears splashing his jacket. The world teeters, and he can’t find his centre of gravity anymore. Grief has made his heart lopsided. As surprising as it is to see Ardyn on his feet, brushing himself off, he doesn’t care. There’s nothing else Ardyn can do to him. His conscious mind has dislocated from his present condition.

“Now you have nobody left to love you,” Ardyn says as he crouches a few feet in front. He clicks his tongue in mock sympathy. “Who knew MTs could mourn with such intensity?”

Ardyn points to his eye – not the empty socket Prompto made with his rage, but his very own eye. “He pushes you off a train, you arrange for his throat to be cut. An eye for an eye.” He winks.

Prompto lashes out, not recognising the animalistic roar that comes out of him. Ardyn’s on his feet much more quickly than Prompto can move with numb legs, though. Instead of following, Prompto lowers himself over Noct. It’s all he can do to protect him now.

Ardyn wags his finger at him and tuts.

“Oh. Now you’re both a bloody mess. What would Ignis say?” Ardyn takes off his hat and ruffles the hair beneath.

The hat flops down onto Noct’s face. “You don’t need to look at that.”

A flash of rage makes Prompto knock it back off. He doesn’t expect Ardyn’s arm to come down so roughly between them. His job isn’t finished. He has to protect Noct, and take him home. There’s nobody else to do that now.

Prompto throws himself down over his best friend’s body, blood and mess be damned.

“Now you’re just being silly,” Ardyn says. Prompto flails at Ardyn, but he manages to grab the back of his jacket and yanks. Prompto feels too weak to fight it. Something’s broken inside him.

Ardyn punches him at the nape of the neck and grabs him by his collar. With that, any hope Prompto harboured of fighting back disappears – he can’t do it with numb hands.

“I have just the place for troublemakers like you. Until your time comes to become an MT, that is,” Ardyn says. He hefts Prompto up to his seat, and drags him away from Noct through drifts of blood-spattered snow.

Prompto tries to find a griphold in the snow, but his hands are still too numb. He looks back to Noct’s body, expecting to see one knee in the air and kinked arms propped up in the snow.

Instead, he sees something else he recognises. Soft arms and a patchwork body, with a bouncing jewel jutting out of its forehead. It has a cute leatherette nose, sleeping eyes, wings on the back, and about three feet in height. Stuffing pops out of a slash on its neck. What did Iris call it? A Moogle doll?

“What...?” Prompto says as Ardyn drops him a hundred feet away from the doll. There’s no blood on the snow. No Noct, either.

“You didn’t think I’d break my favourite toy so early in the game, did you?” Ardyn asks with a smile. He holds Prompto’s revolver by the barrel. “This hurt, by the way.”

The butt of the revolver cracks against Prompto’s nose before he can reach out to stop it. His eyes water for a whole new reason, but after that, darkness falls on the golden snow and he remembers nothing.


End file.
